Soldered RAM is becoming very common in laptops of all shapes and sizes — but is that a good thing?
Source: The real reason so many laptops have moved to soldered RAM | Digital Trends
I so knew it! There’s no real reason for companies to go in favor of the dreaded soldered-on RAM other than form factor (if, at all!) and production cost. Other than that: The purported gains are marginal to where they can be safely called negligible! Eat this, Apple Inc.!
Personally, I wouldn’t go out buying a laptop or any (larger, mobile) device with soldered-on RAM even when held at knife-point. Once the soldered–on fad is over, your still new device which you might want to trade for a higher performing one is going to be like dead meat hanging around your neck on the market platforms for previously owned | used devices. In other words: A dead brick you can only lose at your local recycling depot.
Whenever I have the budget for a more up-to-date mobile device, I’m going to place my hopes on the new CAMM2 standard for memory chips that’s just been signed off on. Until consumer and poweruser devices will become available, I’m hoping to be in a more stable situation again, financially speaking. And unless Apple Inc. aren’t going to embrace this with their machines, there’s an even greater likelihood I might turn my back on their products and services for good after some 30 years of purchasing and using almost exclusively their products from the times of the first consumer-affordable laser printer LaserWriter IIg…
Addendum: As I’m just now making myself familiar with the boons of the new memory module standard CAMM2 and immediately see how it will overcome all the shortcomings that currently have manufacturers ditch SO–DIMM / DDR5 slotted modules in favor of soldered-on ones, I’d suggest Apple had better started planning for that transition and someone there responsible for product development had better heard the battle bell and started on some new motherboard designs that will accommodate the then state-of-the-art technology, for it will be an incredibly hard sell to customers when competitors left and right will have updated their product offerings to then veer away from soldering their hardware onto the motherboard… In plain English: Get with the program, Apple engineers!
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Since you’re aiming directly at Apple: Unified memory is an integral part of the whole Apple silicon concept and it works exceptionally well with the downside that it only works with solderered RAM. Therefore it won’t go away anytime soon. I had to replace my iMac a year ago after only nine years because I did not listen to a friend who warned me of its weak GPU. I exchanged the iMac with 32 GB of user replaceable RAM for a used Mac mini with the slowest Apple Silicon ever (M1) and the minimum amount of 8 GB of unified memory and never looked back. The dead meat hanging around my neck lost about 100 € in value over the course of the last 12 months which calculates to a monthly rent of a bit more than 8 €. I can live with that. Why should I trade it for a higher performing one? I do the same kind of work for 30 years. I will eventually replace it for safety reasons when it can’t run the newest OS but not for performance. Even the slowest Macs nowadays are faster than my brain.
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Yes, very understandable. Might have done the same or very similar in your situation.
Personally, it makes me queasy to think that Apple seem to continue dominating the markets as they have been and seem to be doing again. I for one embrace diversity over “one size fits all” or something like a cartell-like dominance. But as in all other walks of life: If that’s all that people want or expect, then I have zero leverage to challenge that.
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